Vigils Reading

SIMPLICITY AND OPENNESS

From the Collected Works of Saint Rafael Arnaiz

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One must walk so many tortured paths to arrive at simplicity. Complication

is such an uncomfortable thing…and we human beings like to complicate

everything for ourselves. Often, if we fail to practice virtue, it’s because our

complicated nature rejects what is simple. Often, we fail to appreciate the

magnificence hidden within an act of simplicity, because we look for greatness in

complicated things; we judge the magnificence of things based on their difficulty…

I clearly see that what seemed dark and complicated to me before is actually

rather simple and straightforward. Virtue…God…the interior life, how difficult I

thought it was to live that! It’s not that I’m virtuous now, or that I have a

completely clear knowledge of God and spiritual life, but I’ve realized that you get

there without complications or complexities, without clever philosophy, without

technical challenges. I’ve come to see that you reach God in precisely the opposite

manner. You come to know Him through simplicity of heart and being

uncomplicated. There’s nothing difficult about acts of love… What’s truly difficult

is wanting to know God by searching out His mysteries. The former leads us to

God, and the latter does not…

So, then, why do we lack virtue at times? Because we aren’t simple; because

we complicate our desires; because everything we want is made difficult by our

weak will, which gets carried away by whatever is pleasing, comfortable, and

unnecessary, and often by its passions. We lack virtue not because it is difficult, but

because we don’t want it. We lack patience…because we don’t want it. We lack

temperance…because we don’t want it. We lack chastity…for the same reason. We

would be saints if we wanted to be…it’s much harder to become an engineer than it

is to become a saint. If only we had faith!

The interior life…the spiritual life, a life of prayer. “My God! That must be

difficult!” But it’s not at all. Get rid of everything in your heart that’s in the way,

and you’ll find God there. That’s it. Often we look for things that aren’t there, and

on the other hand we’ll walk right by a treasure without seeing it…We look for Him

in a whole tangled mess of things, and to us, the more complicated they are, the

better. And all the while, we are carrying God around inside of us, yet we don’t look

for Him there. Collect yourself within…gaze upon your nothingness, gaze upon the

nothingness of the world, place yourself at the foot of the cross, and if you are

simple, you will see God… All we have to do is want Him, and God will fill the soul

again in such a way that you’d have to be blind not to see it.

If a soul wants to live according to God’s ways…it must be rid of everything

that is not Him…and that is it. It’s quite easy. If we wanted to, and if we asked God

with simplicity, we would make great progress in the spiritual life. If we wanted to

be saints, we would be… But we’re such fools that we don’t want to…We prefer to

waste time on stupid vanities. We’ll regret that someday.

But I am very happy, because I have come to see that everything is simple

and straightforward…and this is within my reach.